


Pull the Earth Around Me to Make My Bed

by elfin (crazylittleelf)



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-14
Updated: 2015-06-14
Packaged: 2018-04-03 23:39:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4118890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crazylittleelf/pseuds/elfin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Noah dreams, too.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pull the Earth Around Me to Make My Bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lexigent](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexigent/gifts).



The Mustang looks gray in the dim twilight.

 _Everything_ looks gray in the dim twilight.

It's always dim twilight.

Noah stares up at the dim gray sky with its dim gray stars and tries to make himself fall asleep. He gives up after a while and walks through town.

The bird things are at the diner.

They perch on the stools at the counter, hunched over their tuna sandwiches, oily feathers fluffed into black manes. Sometimes Noah wonders how they get from here to Ronan's dreams. He wonders if he could go with them and Ronan could dream him back alive. Sometimes he thinks he'll ask Ronan if he could do that, but Noah's afraid of the answer.

Some things it's better to wonder about than to know.

*****

His dreams are random at first, chaotic bursts of his life before, glimpses of memories. He's in the halls of Aglionby, surrounded by swarms of unfamiliar students. He's standing in the middle of Henrietta's main street watching cars pass him, their drivers unseeing. He's lost in the deep woods, slipping down rocks at the edge of an abrupt outcropping that breaks the endless trees. He's alone. He's always alone.

Until one dream he isn't.

*****

Time doesn't work here.

It takes him a while to figure that out he thinks, but maybe not because time doesn't work here.

He tries marking the days, but since the light never changes he doesn't know when one day changes to the next.

Henrietta changes in his dreams, though, subtle at first, then larger things like new buildings, different cars.

When he's awake, though, it's exactly like it was when he first got there. There's no trace of Ronan or Gansey when he's awake. Monmouth is empty and cavernous. The house on Fox Way is silent and dark, no movement behind the dusty windows. No Blue. No Adam with his grease-stained fingers that he tries so hard to hide.

There's no one there when he's awake and time doesn't work and Noah never would have guessed that being dead was so _boring_.

*****

Sometimes he dreams and his body isn't his own. His limbs don't respond - they move of their own accord, fixed to a routine that Noah can't stop. The blow to his face is a dull thump, then flaring pain that floods his system. He's gripped again by terror as his breath gurgles though the blood that collects in his nose and mouse, his throat, his lungs. He knows he's asleep, dreaming, reliving his death in nightmare form, but unlike the other dreams he's powerless to act, helpless and enthralled. He sees the trees around him, feels the grass against his cheek when he falls. The loamy green scent wars with the smell of his own blood. He hears Barrington behind him, over him, panting harshly.

Noah waits to die in his nightmares again and again.

At the start, he always wakes alone, shaking and sobbing.

One day through, the nightmare ends and slides straight into a dream, Monmouth Manufacturing rising around him, Ronan watching him warily. After the next one the house on Fox Way shimmers into being, Blue looking at him with pity on her face.

He never slides out of the nightmare at Aglionby, never some random place in Henrietta surrounded by strangers who are only half-aware of his presence. He never comes out of the nightmares alone anymore.

*****

Distance doesn't work here any more than time does. Noah can walk to Nino's just by thinking that's where he's going, and then he's there. He can cross the street and be at Aglionby. He can cross the quad and be at Monmouth Manufacturing.

But distance doesn't work here, and there are places he can't get to. No matter how hard he thinks about home, it's always too far away, the house silhouetted on the fixed horizon. He stares and maybe he can see his father's car pulling up in the driveway. His mother and the girls getting out, unloading shopping bags. He can almost hear them laughing.

But he can't.

*****

The Mustang is red in his dreams. It's vivid and beautiful and terrible and the color of blood.

He forgets that. When he's awake, the color is leached from it leaving it dull and harmless. He doesn't visit it very often. When he does he has nightmares for a while and he'd really rather not have nightmares.

Awake, though, it fills him with longing and loathing, reminds him of everything he wants to forget.  It's like being punched, live being murdered again but even worse than the nightmares because he _expects_ it in the nightmares.  He doubles over and dry heaves, and even though he's retching he wants to giggle at the absurdity of a ghost trying to barf at the sight of a car.

Noah thinks Ronan would appreciate the humor.

*****

He's awake, which is why he doesn't notice her at first. He's always alone when he's awake, so there's no reason to expect anyone else to be there.

Well, except the freaky bird-things, but they don't count because _freaky bird-things_.

He's walking aimlessly, enjoying the false-summer that happens when it's slightly less dim than usual. When he finally sees her, looks toward the rhythmic squeaking of the rocking chair, she's a smudge of color against the gray world.

"Shit," Noah says, startled by the loudness of his own voice.

She doesn't look at him.

Noah approaches her cautiously. He's always avoided her and her sisters and cousins and nieces and all the women who live in the house on Fox Way. They see through his dreams and know that he's dead.

Until Blue. Blue's different.

Persephone tilts her head and asks, "Why is that here?"

Noah doesn't think she's talking to him. She's looking over Noah's shoulder to the bird-thing perched on a car. Noah shrugs, " They just show up sometimes."

She doesn't look away from the bird-thing and says, "You need to help him."

Noah looks back at the bird-thing, confused. "What?"

"I've done everything I can but it isn't enough," she continues.

Noah looks back and considers.  "You mean Adam."

She looks directly at him, and he stumbles back because suddenly she's right in front of him. The blackness of her eyes is blacker than anything Noah's ever seen, a void waiting to swallow him in its depths and never let him out.

"You're not the only one who's dreaming," she says.

A gust of wind shakes the world and she dissolves like dandelion seeds, white wisps caught in the breeze and torn away.


End file.
